


la torne

by 4TSloid



Category: Fire Emblem: Soen no Kiseki/Akatsuki no Megami | Fire Emblem Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn
Genre: Anal Sex, Blood and Injury, Hanahaki Disease, M/M, Mild Gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-27
Updated: 2019-05-14
Packaged: 2019-09-28 11:24:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 8
Words: 9,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17182046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/4TSloid/pseuds/4TSloid
Summary: If the ends of love attempt to meetBlood may fall from claws and teethTakes place between chapters 29 and endgame of PoR. A twist on the old hanahaki.





	1. Chapter 1

All he can see is Ike, and Soren is expecting something terrible to happen to him.

Soren doesn’t dream often, but when he does, it’s vivid and near tangible, just like this. He can feel the ruler coming down on his fingers, or the eyes boring into the back of his head, or the stress threatening to collapse his temples, or his lungs about to burst after his head held underwater for so long. But what Soren feels in this dream is not pain.

Soren is confused, but it fades quickly when Ike’s shirt comes off. Now he’s  _ watching  _ Ike fall into bed with a Soren, naked-- Soren is watching the two of them; on the outside looking in. Dream Soren is already naked, and Ike is getting there; fingers poised at the laces of his pants and the other hand wrapped around Dream Soren’s bare waist. “Look at those muscles,” Dream Soren cooes, and embarrassment thrashes Soren inside his cheeks and chest. “So big.” Soren wants to curl up in a ball and scream, but his vantage point above the bed is unchanged. Who would say that,  _ out loud _ ?

“It’s all for you,” Dream Ike replies, reciting exactly what Soren wanted to hear. Who would say _that_ out loud, either? The two kiss open-mouthed. Soren realizes the two are in Ike’s bed; back at the Greil mercenaries’ barracks-- which probably doesn’t exist in the way Soren remembers since the company had to burn it. Is anyone home? He watches in horror as Dream Soren takes Ike’s pants off, but from when his cock hits open air to when it’s first sheathed inside Dream Soren’s ass is a blacked-out blur.

The sex is good. Now Dream Soren and Soren are one again, and he feels what he could possibly consider Ike’s dream cock thrusting in and out of his hole. Dream Soren shouts Ike’s name; Ike shouts Soren’s. Before either of them can come, though, Soren awakes, skin burning, to nearby footsteps and activity, just outside his tent.

A green-haired head pokes in through the flaps. “Soren.” It’s Stefan, the lone-wolf swordsman they’d picked up in the Grann desert months back. His eyes smile along with his face.  “I’m on wake-up call duty today. You know we march at noon.”

“I’m awake,” Soren replies.

“A  _ thank you _ would be nice.”

“Well, I’m not nice, especially not immediately after I wake.” Stefan doesn’t leave. “Goodbye,” Soren adds.

“I’m contractually obliged not to leave until you are physically out of bed, you know.”

“Show me this contract.”

“It was spoken.”

Soren sighs. After a good few minutes, he produces himself, out of bed. He yawns. “Good morning.”

“Good morning to you, too,” Stefan says, with a smirk Soren would love to blast right off his face, and leaves. Soren waits until he’s out of earshot before mentally listing everything that was wrong about the dream he’d just had.

He would’ve chosen not to sleep at all in a heartbeat over the atrocity his mind had just concocted for his viewing pleasure. Soren was used to waking up in the dead of the night in tears, knowing that he could sneak with his blankets and his bedroll into Ike’s tent and fall asleep on the ground next to his cot; the occasional bearlike snore assuring Soren that he was safe. But  _ this _ was the exact opposite of something Soren would take to Ike. Soren didn’t even know what a real cock felt like in his ass; he was a virgin through and through. The last time Soren had seen Ike, or any other man naked, was when the two were nine or ten years old after bathing in the river (it was Ike who walked in on Soren, and with some quick thinking, Soren told him ‘you change facing this corner, and I’ll change facing that one’, but failed to realize his corner was where a mirror stood, the only one in the whole barracks).

A draft passes through the tent and Soren notices his crotch is doused. He  _ did _ come after all, and Stefan--!

Dread seeps into his gut. At least Soren had a whole march ahead of him; a whole march he could use to avoid both Stefan and Ike.


	2. Chapter 2

“Ah-ah-ah,” Aimee reaches to point Ike’s chin back in the direction of the path ahead, but Ike resists. She lowers her voice, adjusting her veil over her neck. “You have to be wearing less clothes than that if you want to look at me there.”

“That rash wasn’t there yesterday, was it?” Ike asks. Aimee doesn’t immediately reply. “It looks like it’s bothering you.”

“It appeared without warning,” she says, after a moment. “And I wasn’t near any poisonous plants, I swear to the Goddess. And I’ve tried all manner of things to rid of it,” Aimee scratches the area on the side of her neck again, “oils, lotions, vulneraries. It doesn’t work. I’ve tried to just resist scratching by my own willpower, but…” She scratches again, more furiously, and stops herself again.

“Make sure you go see Rhys about it,” Ike says, and starts to turn away from her. Aimee grabs him by the shoulder.

“I need somebody to distract me from scratching, so you’re staying right here, big boy.”

“I’m sorry, I have to check in with Soren.”

Aimee’s hand falters. “Oh.” And with that, Ike spins out of her grip and heads towards the back of the procession.

Ike passes a clearing in the trees on the way, through which the sun shines red behind a smoky haze. It looked to be evening in the woods, but it was only a while past midday. If a part of the forest nearby had caught fire, or worse-- Daein had found them and was trying to smoke them out-- the army could be in big trouble. Like Aimee’s itch, it wasn’t there yesterday. And Ike hadn’t seen Soren since yesterday, either. Ike had once heard his father say that trouble always bears three children, and Soren’s absence was the third child. Oscar and Kieran ask him why he’s not with Soren as he heads past, and Ike responds that he’s trying to find him. The units at the very back of the march, Ilyana and Astrid, report that Soren must have fallen behind. Ike scolds himself for not finding Soren earlier in the day, and picks up his pace to a run.

* * *

 

“Finally,” Stefan greets Soren again. “I have you by yourself.” He clears his throat. “Not that I’m going to kill you, otherwise I wouldn’t have announced that first.”

“Well, that’s too bad,” Soren replies, not knowing if he meant it as biting sarcasm or not. A painful recall of that morning resurfaces in his head. Soren hopes that if he doesn’t bring it up, Stefan wouldn’t either.

“You and our commander,” Stefan says, stepping in front of Soren’s line of sight, walking backwards to keep pace with the march, “our general, now, I suppose, are attached at the hip.”

“And the sky is blue,” Soren retorts. “Is this something that concerns him?” 

Stefan slows and halts to gaze up through a clearing in the trees. “Not at the moment, no,” he says, towards the murky sky and the red sun. He reaches through his hair to scratch at his forehead a little. “As in, the sky isn’t blue.” Soren sidesteps Stefan, to catch up with the back of their corral, but Stefan has the corner of Soren’s cape pinched in between his thumb and index finger, holding him back. “You know he can’t stay with you.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Feigning ignorance is below you,” Stefan insists. “You know  _ exactly _ what I’m talking about.”

Soren swallows. “Why are you bringing this up?”

“It’s the truth. It can be ugly sometimes. Don’t pretend that your commander won’t wither away to an undignified husk in a hundred years or so while you sit wallowing in your own shame because you have nary a wrinkle on your placid visage.” Stefan gives the corner of Soren’s cape a tug. “Look at me,” he urges. 

He doesn’t. “Thanks,” Soren says, his voice flat. At this, he tugs his cape out of Stefan’s pinched fingers just as a blue-haired figure marches into view. 

“Speak of the devil,” Stefan murmurs. The space between Soren’s eyes starts to itch.

“Soren!” Ike calls. Soren’s stomach flips. Why did he have to call out his name like that? Who else did Ike expect? Who else would be standing at the back of the procession, in dark robes and carrying a wind tome, so that Ike would have to call out for Soren just to make sure? He tries to smile at Ike.

Stefan and Ike exchange a nod. “I was worried about you,” Ike says, turning on his heel and falling into step with Soren. He feels Ike’s hand on the centre of his back, beneath his cape. Soren takes a giant step forward to avoid the touch. “I just… didn’t see you for all this morning and I thought it was weird. I mean, if you don’t want to, you shouldn’t feel obliged to follow me around just because you’re my tactician and staff officer and all, I’m just concerned as a friend and if there’s anything I can do--”

“That’s, that’s fine,” Soren replies, hoping his voice wouldn’t crack. “I’m fine. Thank you.” He takes another half a step away from Ike’s shoulder, calculating every movement as to not suggest that he’d just had a dream about Ike fucking him so deep in the ass. Out of the corner of his eye, Soren spots Ike trying to meet his gaze, but he gives up. With a single finger, Soren scratches his forehead, edging his bangs out of the way.

“You don’t think Daein’s trying to smoke us out?” Ike says, changing the subject.

“I don’t taste any smoke on the air now,” Soren responds. “If anything, the fire’s far away. Perhaps you could ask a beast tribe later. They’re good with smelling things.”


	3. Chapter 3

“Not smoke,” Mordecai muses, eyes focussed on some point behind Ike, where Nephenee and Mia were setting up a tent closest to the treeline. “Not smoke from wood or tree fire. Don’t know what burns,” he reports. 

Ranulf nods in agreement. “And not a smelting fire, either,” he adds. “You know. To make beorc weapons. None of us could smell that from so far away anyways.”

“Right,” Ike says. “Any idea as to what it  _ could _ be, though?”

“Probably  some kind of herb, for medicine,” Ranulf guesses. “But I’m hardly the expert on that. Maybe your sister, or the guy dressed in white who travels with you would know. But a lot of it is being burned all at once, which is too strange not to be deliberate.”

Mordecai’s eyes snap wide open. “Blood.” Shoves past Ike with urgency in his step.

“Is that what’s burning?” Ike asks, in disbelief.

“Oh,” Ranulf adds, nostrils flaring, as Mordecai starts to pad in the direction of the convoy wagon. “Someone’s hurt, that is.” He socks Ike in the back of the arm, a gesture Ike had come to known as  _ let’s go _ . He gives Ranulf a nod and the two follow Mordecai. 

A scream pierces the air. The three pick up their pace-- it’s Aimee, calling for a medic. “I should get Mist,” Ike tells Ranulf, before turning and almost running Mist over.

“Get out of the way!” Heal staff in hand, Mist tries to step past Ike, but Ike steps in the same direction as she does. She tries the other way, but so does Ike. Mist growls at him. “Now’s not the time to be a wisecrack,” she says, shoving past him and Ranulf and stomping to the convoy, where Ike notices dark blood and the hem of Aimee’s skirt from behind the wagon’s wheels.

The soft light of Mist’s staff glows from behind the wagon now. A gruff voice overtop Aimee’s groans demands she stop scratching, and the light from the staff disappears. By the time Ike circles around to investigate what exactly is going on, Aimee claws at her neck while Muston grabs her wrists, in an attempt to stop her from further agitating the half-healed wound. “What’s going on?” Ike asks.

“The staff,” Aimee squeaks out. “It heals the wound… the itch doesn’t… stop!” She squirms under Muston’s grasp with a strength none her own, the nails on her left hand grazing the side of her neck Ike saw her scratching at earlier. On the skin, right over her jugular, Ike spots a dark mark resembling a twisted vine, or a gnarled tree root. Ike lunges for Aimee’s left arm to keep her from scratching further as she breaks free from Muston’s hold again. Aimee makes strong eye contact with Ike, too strong. “I’ve always wanted you to hold me against a wall, but never like this,” she whispers. Ike pretends she never said anything.

Rhys arrives-- Mist must have brought him. “Aimee, I need you to hold on for just a little longer. If we can put some ice on your rash, it should help,” he suggests. Where would anyone find ice at this time of year? “Mist, tell Soren.” Rhys sends Mist off again. Why Soren? Rhys turns back to Aimee. “Don’t worry, I’ll stay right here. Does it hurt when you’re not touching it?”

“All the time,” Aimee replies, breathing hard with a tremor in her voice. Standing this close to Aimee, Ike can see sweat beading at her hairline. “It’s like maggots, or beetles underneath my skin. It hurts whether I scratch it or not!”

“How long has it been itching?”

“Since yesterday.”

“Do you remember seeing any poison ivy on the way here?” Aimee shakes her head no. 

Rhys looks to Muston and Ike, and gets similar responses. Aimee puts a little more of her weight on Ike’s grip, and he looks down to see her trying to scratch at her legs with the heel of her shoe. Surely she couldn’t do  _ that _ much damage with only her heel. She kicks off one of her shoes and tries to scratch with her toenails now. Muston seems to notice it this time.

“We need to hold her down,” he insists, scooping Aimee right up into his arms. Ike scrambles to restrain her again, but her hands fly right up to her neck.

“No!” Ike yells, but Aimee’s veil and her dress quickly soak through in crimson. He grabs at her arms, but they’re slick with her blood already. Muston puts her back on her feet, trying to help. Rhys fumbles a Heal staff. Aimee’s knees go weak and she crumples to the floor.

“Keep her upright!” Rhys warns, in the chaos. Aimee’s eyes are glazed over as Rhys’ staff glows. Ike can’t bring himself to reach down and pick her up. It’s not just because he wants to avoid getting blood on his clothes; because hundreds of enemy soldiers have done that for him. Deep down, Ike wouldn’t mind if he never saw Aimee again, but he never meant like this.


	4. Chapter 4

Mist bursts into Soren’s tent amid nearby commotion. “Soren, I need you to make ice, right now!”

“What for?”

“Aimee’s in trouble! Do it, now!” Soren tries not to roll his eyes. He wouldn’t give a rat’s asshole to the woman as long as she breathed in the direction of Ike. Soren empties the contents of his water skin into an (hopefully) empty bucket nearby and readies a tome. In fact, all the better if Aimee was on the receiving end of some frozen piss. 

“I’ll need a towel, or a rag,” Soren says. Mist unties her scarf as he directs a potent spell right into the bucket, the temperature of the air in the tent dropping palpably. Soren snatches Mist’s scarf from her, straightening it on his cot, upturns the frigid bucket on it, and gives the pail a few smacks with the heel of his hand. The block of ice drops into the scarf. “You’re welcome.”

Mist leaves as quickly as she came, the icy bundle in her arms. Soren estimates he gets half a page’s worth of work done before his next uninvited guest arrives. Soren greets Stefan with a glare colder than the piss he just froze-- “what do you want?”

“You’re still not with the commander?” Stefan asks, sitting on Soren’s cot and making himself at home. 

“Unfortunately, I can’t be in two places at once,” Soren says, picking up his quill again in order to keep himself from scratching at a persistent itch on his forehead.

“Not in that way,” Stefan says. To Soren’s annoyance, he kicks off his boots and sits cross-legged on the quilts. “You’ve deliberately abstained from contact with him. What happened?”

“None of your business, is what’s happened.”

“Had a lovers’ quarrel?”

Soren stiffens, but forces himself to relax, as any reaction would only justify Stefan’s harassment. “Nothing happened. I’m simply extremely busy.” A figment of the truth. Soren was good at dispensing those. “Now, begone. And put your shoes back on.”

Stefan complies with the latter, leaving the two in a highly uncomfortable silence. He opens his mouth to continue friendly discussion, but Soren beats him to it. “Why are you here?”

He cracks a smile Soren would question the genuity of. “I just want to know,” Stefan says. “Why you’re not with Ike. It’s uncharacteristic.”

“I heard you the first time,” Soren replies, scratching behind one of his ears. “What I meant is why that involved approaching me alone, at the back of the convoy; or in my own tent. Confronting me, if you will, would be a better word.”

“Then how would you rather I speak with you?”

Soren stops himself from saying  _ with Ike nearby _ . He swallows. “Leave,” Soren demands, pointing to the door, “unless you have actual business with me.”

“The itch has been getting worse, hasn’t it?”

“Shut up and leave.” Soren feels Stefan’s presence behind him, then a refreshingly cool pressure square over his brand.

“How’s this?” Stefan asks. Soren hesitates. His touch seems to alleviate the itch tremendously. “Okay?” He removes his hand, and in moments, the itching sensation returns. Soren reaches to press upon the area himself, but it turns into a scratch. He  _ knows  _ Stefan is smirking behind him. “Where else does it itch?”

“How do you know about the--” Soren is interrupted by the sound of fingernails on flesh. He whirls around to spot Stefan, scratching his own forehead, behind his hair. Stefan reaches for the back of one of Soren’s rash-covered hands, peeling back the sleeve of his robe, then his undershirt.

“How could I  _ not _ know?” Stefan asks back. “You know, they say, ‘the greater tide of feelings flow, the more  _ la torne  _ knows to grow’.”

“That’s not something I’ve heard a lot of people say.”

Stefan drags his hands up Soren’s arms; pushing up his sleeves, revealing blotches of dry, mottled rashes. “Put more brusquely, stress plus a risk of death and a splash of libido equals all of this.” He clears his throat. “But from all the damage here, I think it’s more like a pint or two.”

Soren stands up so fast he almost knocks over his desk, but can’t articulate words for a second. “What you saw in my tent this morning,” he says, through clenched teeth. “ _ Stays _ in this tent. You’d best not tell  _ anybody _ what you saw or I’ll shave your hide with your own sword.”

“Especially not the commander?”

“ _ Especially  _ not--” Soren stops himself. His face heats up. “Leave.” He can hardly keep himself from shouting, or choking on his words, or his eyes from flooding over.

A long moment passes. “Very well,” Stefan says. This time, he does leave. Soren puts his head in his hands, and wonders if there could ever be a conversation he could have with Stefan without it leading back to Ike.


	5. Chapter 5

Aimee’s body is buried just outside camp, and the convoy plus Ilyana lay flowers atop her grave. Muston blames himself, and is unseen for the rest of the day. Half of Ike’s shirt and his only good pair of slacks are too sodden with her blood to be of any more service, so he has little choice today than to sit near-naked in his tent. At least he could train without getting too hot and sweaty.

Then comes time for the war meeting, which would mark the first time in a while that he could see Soren. Ike gets so caught up in what could possibly be plaguing Soren’s mind for the past few hours that he loses track of how many sit-ups deep he was into his current set. He’s waiting on Mist to stick her arm in through the tent flap and drop a freshly patched-up pair of pants on the floor for him in time for the meeting. But the pants don’t come, and Ike is sure that everyone is waiting on him. A hand jostles the tent door. “Ike,” it’s Titania. “What’s keeping you?”

“My pants,” Ike replies, scratching an incessant itch on his lower stomach. “As in, I don’t have any.” 

Titania audibly sighs.

* * *

 

Ranulf would normally greet Ike with something along the lines of  _ look who finally decided to show up! _ or  _ if it isn’t the man of the hour! _ , but even he is silent when Titania leads Ike into the tent five minutes late to the meeting. Curiously enough, a bedsheet is tied around Ike’s lower half like a kilt, dragging through the dust as he walked. He wears his shirt from yesterday, still half-soaked in blood. Soren tries not to pay any attention to it, and returns to presenting his findings on the rumoured  _ Twisted Tower _ they would approach in due time, scratching under his chin the whole way. “As I was saying,” Soren declares, passing out copies of his research meticulously scribed by hand, in packages of eight pages each, double sided (and this was only the condensed version, mind) to the packed tent. Ike waddles past Soren to stand behind Reyson, peering over his head at the maps and diagrams laid out upon the table. The war meetings as of late always seemed to draw a crowd. “The tower is surrounded by dense forest, which will make for difficult traverse. There is one clear path that would funnel us all towards the front of the tower, while Laguz reinforcements could very easily strike from the woods.”

Ranulf inhales through his teeth. “Simple,” Tanith interjects. “We attack from above.”

“You seem to forget that there are bird Laguz, too,” Reyson says.

“Not as if they’ll have bowmen.”

“And what if there are?”

Sigrun taps Tanith on the elbow. “Listen,” she scolds. “We can’t underestimate the enemy.”

Tanith rolls her eyes in Reyson’s direction. “As if you’re in any position to give us combat advice.”

“You shouldn’t squander my advice,” Reyson insists, standing in a flash from his chair, kicking it out to the side, and stepping firmly in Tanith and Sigrun’s direction. Leanne calls out to him in warning, but he doesn’t heed it. “As a Laguz, I believe my point of view is vital to our success in this next battle.” Wait, is that Ike’s ass?

Soren whirls his head away from the clamour and pretends to study the nearest map. He hears Reyson curse in the ancient tongue, a flurry of apologies in Ike’s direction, and Leanne trying to lecture her brother overtop of the two. Soren notices all of the heads in the room turned away from the scene as well; sharing exasperated glances and slack jaws after having seen more of their general than they ever wished to. When Soren turns back to face Ike, he finds him re-tying the knot in his bedsheet kilt and meeting Soren’s eyes for a split second. Soren puts his head in his hands and rubs his temples. The rub turns into a scratch.

“Alright, everybody,” Ike announces, his cheeks-- that is, the ones on his face and not… elsewhere-- pink. “Some decency, please.” A few half-hearted laughs.

The rest of the war meeting passes in a blur. Soren hardly speaks afterwards; it seemed that the alpha personalities had done all the talking for him. Tanith confirms that she and the two other pegasus riders would assault from above, while the cavaliers and Ike took up the front and armoured units flanked the sides. The tent empties. It seems that Ike is hanging back with Titania, to get a chance to properly speak with Soren.

When Ike catches his gaze again, Soren packs up his files and his diagrams and his research and heads for the door. Ike steps towards him, but his step is muffled by a bedsheet; followed by a scuffling of shoes on the floor and a body hitting the floor. “Be careful,” Titania says, down to Ike, as the tent flap shuts behind Soren. “You have to lift that skirt when you walk.” Ike murmurs something about things like that coming naturally to a woman.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i hope it was clear enough that it was reyson who stepped on ike's kilt and inadvertently pantsed him


	6. Chapter 6

Having rifled through Rhys’ medicinal texts for any mentions of mysterious rashes, Soren is met in his tent by Stefan, sitting smugly on the cot. Before either can speak a word, Soren draws a dagger from a sheath beneath his robes. “Get out.” 

Stefan chuckles, and Soren is having a hard time not stepping right up to him and showing him his own intestines. “You wouldn’t really use that against me, would you?” He asks. “That would be murder.” Soren lowers his weapon, but doesn’t sheathe it. “Besides, I have a mutually beneficial proposal in mind.”

“What?”

“It’s an old wives’ tale, but,” Stefan starts. “If we went out to the forest tonight, just you and me…”  _ I could kill you and nobody would find the body _ , Soren thinks. Stefan lowers his voice. “We could make love. And the itch would disappear.”

“Have intercourse? With  _ you _ ?”

“Uh, Soren, could you do me a favour?” A voice from behind chimes. Soren nearly jumps out of his boots. It’s Ranulf, clutching the side of his arm and looking significantly less chipper than usual. And if he’d spent the past few moments eavesdropping on Soren and Stefan discussing sex with a knife in his hand, Soren would beg for Ashera to smite him where he stood.

“Depends,” Soren replies, stowing his weapon.

“Well, I’d like you to make some ice for me like you did for Aimee,” Ranulf says. “I’ve had this itch since this morning and it’s a little annoying.”

_ Perhaps without the frozen piss, _ Soren thinks. “Certainly.” He walks further inside to get his waterskin and the bucket again, the latter of which is under the cot. “Move,” Soren says, to Stefan’s legs, which block the way to the bucket. He kicks the bucket to him, revealing a cloudy white splatter inside which certainly wasn’t there before.

Soren shoots his fist into the underside of Stefan’s jaw. His head snaps back in a moment of redeeming surprise. “You brazen--!” Soren snarls. “Son of a bitch!”

“What’s going on?” Ranulf dares to ask. Soren empties his waterskin into the bucket and readies his tome while Stefan processes what just happened. At the same time, Soren sees, out of the corner of his eye, a trickle of something dark down Ranulf’s elbow.

“You’re supposed to ask for ice  _ before _ you start bleeding,” Soren tells him.

Ranulf turns to head out the door. “So I should go to Rhys?”

“No, stay here and take the ice anyways. I need your serape to put this in.” Ranulf unties it from around his waist with one hand while Soren freezes whatever’s in the bucket with a spell. He smacks the ice into Ranulf’s serape and passes it to him.

“I’m not sure if I need this much.”

“Break it up and give it out to anyone else who’s itching,” Soren replies. “Because it seems like everyone is.”

“Yeah, no kidding,” Ranulf says, holding the ice against his side. “Something in the air?”

“Could be.”

“See ya.” Ranulf leaves. Soren spins back to Stefan now, hatred renewed in his eyes.

“Your legs, hopefully,” Stefan says. “Will be what’s in the air.”

Soren’s hand flies to his knife again. “I ask again,” he says. “How will that help?”

“It’s worth a try. If it works, you and I will both be free of the itch. A win-win.”

A beat of silence. “Say, Stefan,” Soren begins.

“Yes?”

“Do you have to do it with another person who has the itch?”

He hesitates. “Not necessarily.”

“Then what’s stopping me from just getting  _ myself _ off?”

“That won’t work.”

“According to whom?” Soren asks. “Sex may as well be the cure for the common cold. There’s no correlation.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. For somebody so well-read, I’m surprised you’ve never heard.”

Soren pulls his knife again and points it at the door. “Leave.” He watches Stefan stand, rub his jaw where Soren decked it, and scratch the side of his neck.

“You might have better luck with Ike,” Stefan says. “Otherwise, see you tonight.”


	7. Chapter 7

While headed to the mess tent for dinner, Ike spots Ranulf out of the corner of his eye with the usual spring in his step weighed down by whatever he was carrying in his serape. “Ranulf,” Ike hollers. “What is that?”

“One second,” he calls back. In a flash of light, Ranulf is in his beast form, using his hind legs to scratch furiously at a spot behind his neck. Ike can make out a dark splotch of blood-matted fur on Ranulf’s front leg. It drips-- the wound is fresh.

“How’d you get that?” Ike approaches. “You should get it looked at by Rhys.”

Ranulf transforms back. “If I could get myself to stop scratching first,” he says, scratching with his hands this time, at his temples and his hairline.

“You can scratch while you walk,” Ike says, putting a hand in the centre of Ranulf’s back and pointing him in the direction of the infirmary tent. Ranulf picks up his bundle of whatever he was carrying. “What is that?” Ike asks again.

“Ice. Soren made it for me.”

“So you’re scratching off the hook, too?”

“Yeah. So are Lethe and Mordecai, now.”

“Come to think of it, I think Stefan’s scratching, too,” Ike says. “He’s got the rashes and everything.” Ranulf scratches the inside of the elbow that isn’t bleeding, now dripping faster and faster as he walks. Ike tries to usher him along a little faster.

The infirmary is full of transformed Laguz, Rhys and Mist running in between them to dress wounds and administer vulneraries. Ike recognizes Lethe and Mordecai’s beast forms, and Reyson pecks beneath his wing irritably. The tent reeks of blood. Almost reflexively, Ranulf shifts, dropping his bundle of ice on the floor. Mist picks it up and struggles to break it over a cot.

“Is there anything I can do to help here?” Ike volunteers.

Rhys peeks out from a chest. “I can’t find any of my references,” he says. Mordecai sniffs, intimidatingly close to Ike’s ear. “And I vividly remember putting them in here.”

“So they were stolen?”

“That’s the conclusion I’ve reached,” Rhys says. “The only place they’ve been in between now and then is in this chest,” he jangles a ring of keys, “and I have the only keys.”

“A thief?”

“A literate thief,” Rhys replies. Mordecai is breathing down Ike’s neck, and so is Mist now, trying to coerce a set of claws off another fresh wound. Rhys cranes his neck towards her. “You might want to check on Lethe,” he says. Ike glances in the corner he last saw her. She lies nearly still, blood pooling around her head. Mist drops everything in her hands, seeming paralyzed for an instant, and shoves Ike aside again, nearly making him sit square on Reyson’s wing.

She puts a hand near Lethe’s muzzle. “She’s breathing, but barely,” Mist reports. Ike sits and watches his sister reattach the bandages Lethe had torn off in pursuit of the itch. He hears a murmur at the door, but as he turns, a flash of red hair disappears from behind the flap.

“I’ll see if I can turn up any leads,” Ike says, standing to leave.

 

Soren tries to focus on the little glass vial of vulnerary balanced on the rock in the river he braces his weight against. Under any other circumstances, he would have stayed in his tent to study skin conditions by himself, but he couldn’t write more than a single line before nearly dislocating his shoulder to scratch at the exact middle of his back. The rushing water around his calves is cold, numbing the itch there. The wrist that Stefan clutches burns. “We could hit two birds with one stone,” Stefan told him. “The river helps with the itching, too.”

There were other, unspoken birds that they were hitting, too. Stefan could indulge in his unfounded fascination with Soren, and at the same time, Soren could fulfill his own curiosity. “As long as I’m taking it from behind,” Soren insisted while Stefan undressed him agonizingly slowly, drinking in every divot and scrape on his body beneath the fading daylight. “And no kissing, or passionate cries of devotion.”

But now, Stefan is lining up his vulnerary-slicked, rock-hard cock up to Soren’s prepared ass, urging one of Soren’s feet up on the rock for better access. Soren tries not to focus on it, reviewing his research in his head:  _ la torne _ is characterized by a dry, oozing rash that increases in severity with the onset of intense stress that can be triggered by the burning of a plant with the same name--

Stefan doesn’t restrain himself from pushing his entire length inside Soren at once. Soren gasps and his knees buckle, but Stefan holds him tight with an arm around his waist, thrusting him into the rock. Soren scrambles to hold on, but he knocks the vulnerary into the river. Stefan doesn’t seem to pay it any mind; his face is buried in Soren’s hair, breath heaving, pinpricks of his spit flying through clenched teeth. With his other hand, Stefan reaches between Soren’s legs and jerks his cock in time with his thrusts. But at his touch, Soren does the unthinkable. “Ike,” he gasps. Stefan’s teeth dig into the side of Soren’s neck. When he opens his mouth to scream, Stefan puts a hand in Soren’s mouth.

“Whatever happened to ‘no passionate declarations’?” Stefan whispers, through his teeth.

It takes a few seconds for the words to register in Soren’s mind. “On your part, I meant,” he says, around Stefan’s fingers.

Stefan removes his hand and returns it around Soren’s cock. “Fair enough.” He gives it a single jerk. “Watch the noise, though,” Stefan says, lowering his voice. Soren tries to focus on his findings again:  _ la torne _ can only subside after these feelings have been resolved, although scholars have debated what this “resolution” entails...

A voice not far away calls out for Soren. It’s Ike. The underside of Soren’s neck itches. Telling Ike about a steamy dream was one thing, but running up to him half-hard and completely naked was another. But Ike was close, and judging from his footsteps in the sand, probably descending the bank. Stefan pulls his cock out. The steps pause; probably noticing Stefan and Soren’s clothes strewn about the bank. “Stefan?” Ike asks, to nobody in particular. Stefan tugs Soren further upstream, trying to get him to wade where Ike couldn’t see. But something keeps Soren where he is.

When Ike’s head finally appears, Soren slaps his hands over his nether regions. Ike withdraws just as quickly. “Soren,” he says, raising his voice above the river.

“What brings you here?”

“I’m sorry for running in on you naked like this, but I need to ask you about something.”

A pregnant pause. “Go on,” Soren says. A spot just within the concave of his armpit, below the skin and within the flesh and sinew, seems to itch now.

“Do you got any of Rhys’ medical books?”

“Yes. They’re all sitting on the desk in my tent.”

“Thanks.” Soren hopes that Ike would leave now, but he stays put. No footsteps. “By the way, half the army did see my ass this afternoon, so I guess we’re even now.” Soren debates whether to justify Ike’s quip with a response. “Wait, is Stefan with you?”

Soren glances out of the corner of his eye, at Stefan hiding in some reeds. “Yes. He is.” A crease grows between his eyebrows. Soren gives him half a smirk.

“That’s nice,” Ike responds, which isn’t the first thing Soren expected him to say. “You’re finally talking to and interacting with other people.” A beat of silence, filled with rushing water. Soren is genuinely confused.  _ Is Ike not putting two and two together? _   “Okay, you two have a good river-wash. I’ll see you.”

The first few footsteps sound through the sand. When they fade into the distance, Soren gives Stefan a glance and wades back to the bank. Soren begins gathering his clothes, but Stefan has followed him. “I’m not done with you quite yet,” he calls to Soren. He scratches at his forearm. “I’m still itching. Get back here.”

“Go fuck yourself,” Soren says. “You could make a medical breakthrough.”

“You’re doing both of us a disservice. If you bleed out into your bedsheets in your sleep, I won’t be crying at your funeral.”

“I’d rather face that than have to touch you with a ten-foot pole ever again.”

“You live a sad little existence,” Stefan says, lowering his voice again. “Think about it. Your entire life has revolved around one boy from your earliest conscious memory. You are a  _ slave _ to that  _ child  _ who cares only about swords and his next meal; and nothing about your heritage.”

“That’s exactly why I love him.”

“Because he doesn’t got enough brain to fit in the shell of a walnut?”

Soren swallows. He starts scratching his armpit, trying to dig deep enough to satisfy that itch deep within. “Wait, Soren!” Ike calls for him again, from just above the bank. Soren covers his privates with his bundle of clothes. Stefan makes no effort to hide himself.

As Ike reaches the apex of the bank, he tries not to stare too hard at either of the other two. “I forgot. I was going to ask you one last thing.” The centre of Soren’s back starts to itch again, at the most inconvenient time. Soren can’t speak. If Ike had heard what he’d just said to Stefan…

Ike unravels his cape from around his shoulders, and draws uncomfortably close to Soren. “Dry off with this.” Soren lets him it over him, patting it down to absorb some drops of water beaded on his skin. The cape obscures Soren’s genitals, so he can continue to indulge the itch under his arm.

“What is this ‘one last thing’?”

“We need extra vulneraries because of all the… mystery itching,” Ike says, noting the outline of Soren’s bent arm propping up the cape. “And I was wondering where you kept yours.”

“I think we’ve used the last one,” Stefan says. To add insult to injury, he produces the vial Soren had knocked into the river earlier. If Ike doesn’t figure out exactly what he and Stefan were just doing, then Soren might just combust on the spot. 

Soren offers Stefan one last glance. “Ike,” he says, turning to him. “I’m headed back with you.”

“You’re gonna change back into your clothes, right--”

“Yes. As in-- I’m going to dress myself first.”

Ike turns his back to Soren while he shakes out his trousers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm sorry i can't write anything without a) turning all the characters into absolute goofballs or b) including embarrassing moments as major plot points


	8. Chapter 8

Ike is all alone with Soren. Life is good. It’s what Ike thinks for about three seconds before he remembers he’s leading a ragtag army against a delirious king, that some key members of his army are bleeding themselves to death as he walks, his camp may or may not be dangerously close to being razed by flames, and he still hasn’t eaten dinner. He keeps his nose pointed back to camp as Soren bobbles in and out of his peripheral vision. “Where did you say Rhys’ stuff was again?”

Soren doesn’t reply. Ike looks back to the dark blob at his side to discover Soren crumpled up in the sand face-first. He’d left a trail of blood in his wake, a puddle of crimson spreading into the ground beneath him. “Soren!” He’s completely unconscious now. Ike tries to twist Soren’s face out of the sand, feeling the tiny draft of breath that denoted he was still alive. Ike hikes Soren up by his armpits, which are soaked and hot. Once he has Soren over his shoulder, Ike’s hands come away bloody as he kicks himself over and over again for not turning back to Soren even once and seeing all that blood on the ground. His mind snaps to Stefan. If he turns out responsible for this, Ike will make sure he pays.

Hustling back to camp with his heart in his throat, Ike draws more attention than he thought he would, dropping Soren off in the infirmary tent, where Rhys and Mist’s patients have been knocked out with a Sleep staff and are scratching in their sleep. With the blood of Aimee, Ranulf, and Soren on his clothes, Ike heads to Soren’s tent in an attempt to find the texts.

He doesn’t have to look far, because open on his desk is a book with an image of a staff in flaking gold leaf on its muddy white cover. Ike can’t read much, but Soren has a column of the text on the open spread boxed off in red ink. When Ike hands it back to Rhys in the infirmary, his finger wedged between the pages the whole way, Rhys gives it a once-over and shakes his head. “I thought so.”

“What is it?” Ike asks.

Rhys slaps the book shut. “It’s nothing I can fix.”

Ike’s heart plummets. “What do you mean?” He spares Soren a glance as Mist wraps the last of a roll of bandages beneath his armpits.

“ _ La torne _ is difficult,” Rhys explains. “Because everybody has their own way of coming to terms with it.”

“Coming to terms with it?” Ike repeats. “What kind of disease  _ is _ this?”

Rhys scratches the side of his nose, and rolls up the sleeve of his robe to reveal a patch of blotchy, uneven skin on the undersides of his arm, particularly near his wrist. The scars are old and slippery. “You see, I got this when I was young and impressionable like you, and some pretty somebody caught my eye.”

“You had it?”

“I think it’s one of the prime reasons for my sickliness,” Rhys says. “One of the last nails in the coffin, if you will. I lost a lot of blood that day.” Ike tries not to scratch his stomach through his clothes. “ _ La torne _ can be triggered by intense stress, grief, anger, or even lust; any extreme emotion. The burning of a plant, also called  _ la torne _ , can heighten a person’s anxiety. That’s what’s being burned right now, so close to our camp. Jill and Haar told me about it-- they had to develop a resistance as part of their soldier training.”

“So extreme emotions make people scratch?”

“Not everyone, though. Laguz are more susceptible to it than beorc, and  _ la torne  _ has played a role in ending many wars in beorc favour.”

Ike can tell why he’s been scratching on and off (a combination of the stress from commanding a unit of hundreds of men, grief from his father’s passing, the anticipation of marching upon Castle Crimea), yet as far as he knows, there aren’t any Laguz in his family tree. He thinks of Soren, his gaze falling back on the still body Mist attends to. “Soren’s usually got his head on straight,” Ike says, being careful not to let slip that Soren was descended from Laguz himself. “I wonder what could have been his trigger.”

Rhys gives him half a smile. “Maybe he’s been bottling something up,” he offers. 

 

When Soren wakes, he’s back in his tent, lying on the covers of his cot. Most remarkably, Ike is sitting right over him, with a hand over one of Soren’s. Ike withdraws it once his eyes flutter open, as if he’d been burned on the stove.

Soren’s throat is parched and the underside of his neck itches, so he reaches to scratch. “No, Soren,” Ike says, reaching for his wrist. “Rhys told me not to let you scratch.”

“Is that why you’re here, now?” Soren can feel sand in his throat. He coughs a few times.

“Wait, here,” Ike says, reaching over to Soren’s desk and producing his waterskin. He uncorks it, but Soren stops him.

“You can’t just make me drink while I’m lying down. You’ll dump that all over my face.”

“Then sit up.”

“I can’t.”

Ike’s eyebrows raise. “I’ve got an idea.” This calls attention to Ike’s face, of course, when Soren realizes that those eyebrows need a trim, and those eyelashes are still criminally long.

“Ashera help us, Ike has an idea.” Soren coughs again, but also notices a few pink, dry, blotchy patches by Ike’s jaw when he tips the skin to his own lips, but doesn’t swallow the mouthful. Ike offers half a smile, then closes in overtop Soren. His face draws close enough for a kiss until Soren feels something wet drop on top of his lips. Ike tugs his jaw open now, and slowly drips water from his mouth to Soren’s. Their lips brush once, twice, and then hold gentle contact till Ike’s mouth is emptied.

“Better?” Ike asks.

Soren sputters, then gives a brief nod. “Ike.” The space between Soren’s eyes starts to itch again, but Ike catches his wrist again. “What are we?”

“Whad’ya mean?”

Soren takes a good long moment to consider his words. “Are we… friends?”

“Have we ever not been?” Ike asks back. “Friends?” Soren doesn’t respond for a second, his face heating up. “Do you… not want to be friends anymore?”

“Ike, our lips just touched.”

“So?”

“We almost kissed.”

“And?”

“Do I have to spell it out for you?” Soren asks, his face burning and his heart too flustered to be frustrated with Ike.

“Then we’re friends who just almost kissed,” Ike says. “You don’t have to be so weird about it.”

“Then will you be so nonchalant when I tell you why I’ve been avoiding you for the whole of yesterday?”

Ike’s reply doesn’t come immediately. “Then tell me.”

Soren reaches behind his back to scratch, but Ike lunges to snatch his wrist away. He tries to wriggle his hand out of Ike’s grasp, but Ike holds fast. “Last night, before Stefan was sent to wake me--” Soren uses his other hand to scratch beneath his chin, feeling for the first time how dry and oozing the skin there was.

“No!” Ike grabs Soren’s other hand, too, holding both of them above Soren’s face and clearly in sight like holstered weapons. “Rhys said you absolutely  _ shouldn’t _ scratch there. There’s a bunch of main arteries in your throat--”

“I know, I know--” Soren says, in response to the piece of commonly recognized anatomical knowledge. He tries to jerk his right arm, in Ike’s weaker left hand, out. The flesh beneath Soren’s throat, his windpipe, his lungs, his heart, is itching. Soren starts to squirm, an edge of chapped skin on his left heel providing some reprieve of an itch on his right calf. Ike sees it and-- to Soren’s horror-- stands up from his stool, straddles Soren’s cot none too gracefully, and sits  _ right in between Soren’s legs _ , their groins dangerously close to touching. “Ike!” Soren says, or tries to say as clearly as he can, as not to suggest a gasp of lustful passion. “Careful…”

The more Soren thinks about it, the worse it gets. Ike is all alone with Soren, in the middle of the night, with only one cot in the tent, in between his legs with both their faces flushed, after having just exchanged a kiss. The itch grows in heat and intensity and Soren struggles harder. 

“For somebody who can’t sit up, you’re sure putting up a fight,” Ike remarks. The skin on Soren’s back, left unaddressed from moments earlier, begins to crawl. 

“Let me scratch,” Soren begs. “Please, I won’t break the skin.” Soren thinks he might have sounded too breathless.

“No,” Ike asserts. “I need to distract you. Uh, where were we before?” Soren swallows, squirming up and down on his itching back. He grinds down harder, moves faster, craving the friction on his skin, but stops in horror, realizing the motion of the shadows he and Ike would cast on the wall of their tent. “You were about to tell me something. Oh, right. You said you were avoiding me for some reason.”

“Correct...” Soren sounds breathless again. He clears his throat and tries again. “Correct.” His mouth is dry again.

“So what was it?”

“Yesterday night,” Soren says. He takes a shuddering breath in, trying to squirm from side to side to scratch his back. “I had a dream.”

A measure of silence. “Yeah.”

While he squirms, Soren wonders how he should phrase it. “I should preface this by telling you I…” The preface peters out. He couldn’t just tell Ike he didn’t feel  _ that  _ way about him, because he absolutely did. Soren lusted for Ike, and it was so painful how close they were in this moment.

“Just say it. No preface.”

Soren swallows. “I dreamed about having sex with you.”

The only visible reaction Soren gets is a twitch of Ike’s eyebrows. “How do two men even  _ have _ sex in the first place?”

Soren licks his lips. He  _ could  _ show Ike how to do just that. He could live out that dream he had last night right then and there. “There are… several ways. Are you familiar with how a man and a woman would…” Soren’s sentence trails off as he shimmies side to side in bed, trying to quell the itch at his very core.

“Spare me the details,” Ike says, his face flushing a little. “You can enlighten me sometime later.”

“Good.”

What Ike does next literally steals Soren’s breath away. Ike, while minding his grip on Soren’s hands, lowers his chest directly on top of Soren’s. Soren squirms again, at the sudden weight. Ike lets off a little.

“Are you trying to suffocate me?” Soren puts his chin as far down as he can to look Ike in the eye, closer than he’s ever been. Soren notes that all of the youthful chubbiness of Ike's cheeks has dissipated over the past several months. 

“No, I just want you to stay still, is all. You’re trying to scratch yourself with the quilts.” Ike’s statement is punctuated by a characteristic gurgle from his stomach. “I don’t get it.”

“What, now?”

“You’re so, so… frustrating sometimes. You never do more for yourself than what’s the bare minimum to keep yourself alive.”

Soren lets a beat of silence pass, trying not to fidget as more and more itches surface on his body. “Thank you for--”, he starts, at the same time Ike says “Soren, look at this--”.

“You go first,” Ike insists.

“Thank you for not reacting… terribly to that revelation,” Soren says.

Ike sighs. “This is what I mean. What makes you think I would’ve made a fuss about a dream you had?”

Soren hesitates. Ike, carefully moving both of Soren’s wrists into one of his own hands, uses his free hand to roll up the sleeve of Soren’s undershirt. As Ike reveals the blotchy, dry, terribly itchy skin beneath, Soren tries not to concentrate on how big Ike’s hands are now, or just how they would feel running down his bare back-- he would take the endless scratching over endless psychosexual torture any day of the week. “What if somebody else had done this to you? Would it be okay then?”

Soren sighs. It was nearly compulsory for the Branded to take punishments on this scale, so  _ la torne _ ends up as just another notch in the bedpost for him.

“Do you really just expect everyone to treat you like dirt?”

“... Frankly, yes.”

“I can’t believe you sometimes.”

“Well, Ike, I know you’ve been good to me,” Soren says. “Very good to me.” The words  _ best friend _ or  _ love _ melt off the tip of Soren’s tongue. Another itch rolls down his back and he shudders. Ike scratches his cheek, leaving a patch of red skin there.

“You’ve carried this entire army right from the start,” Ike insists.

“Ike,” Soren says. “You shouldn’t downplay your contributions, either.”

“No, I’m serious, Soren. I’m just the face. I’m the god of this crazy religion that the troops believe in so that they don’t lose their minds.”

“But Ike,” Soren is now conscious of how he says Ike’s name, reveres it, savours it in the click in the back of his mouth as he forms the sound. “You’re a leader. You get along with everybody, and that’s not to mention your skill on the battlefield.”

“Anybody can do what I do, Sorn,” Ike says, slurring Soren’s name into one syllable like he does when he’s tired. His left eye twitches. “Anybody can be taught to be like me. It’s people like you who are born that way, who're really irreplaceable.”

With that, Ike’s grip of Soren’s hands loosens as he wraps his arms around Soren, and starts to snore, face-first in the pillow with his cheek feathering Soren’s neck. After tonight, Ike and Soren would be friends who had kissed, lain in compromising positions with each other, and shared a bed. Of course the two had slept together before, when they were very young and it didn’t matter so much. (It was after Boyd started urging Ike to consider the possibility of sleeping with a girl one night at the dinner table that confined Ike and Soren to their own bunks.)

Soren lets several minutes pass, feeling the itch wash over him while Ike drools into the pillow, soundly asleep.

“I love you,” Soren whispers.  He can't remember anything much after that. He must have fallen asleep, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hehe that feh ikesoren valentines banner was good while it lasted. Guess i'm saving up orbs for their reruns on the legendary banner in august or something.


End file.
